Unusably slow build; can't fix

Help
1

I thank you in advance for your patience. I’ll start with what’s happening now and then explain how I got here.

When I boot up, everything hangs for a few minutes before the logon screen. I can use urxvt no problem, but some things hang for minutes. Qutebrowser, Chromium, starting a supercollider server.

This happened after a channel change and some updates which were… challenging…

I’ll give more backstory after posting some info.

cat proc/version: Linux version 5.15.0 (nixbld@localhost) (gcc (GCC) 10.3.0, GNU ld (GNU Binutils) 2.35.1) #1-NixOS SMP Sun Oct 31 20:53:10 UTC 2021

configuration.nix: http://ix.io/3ED1

cat /proc/cpuinfo: http://ix.io/3ED2

please let me know what else I can post to get help.

So back to the backstory: I was struggling with some broken software so I decided to update. I was getting the could not find any previously installed systemd-boot error when trying to update. Then I was getting kicked from the xserver. I still have both of these problems if I go back to any pre-hanging build. and I still have the the systemd-boot problem in the present build though it doesn’t seem to actually be causing any issues.

Honestly I don’t know how I was able to get a somewhat working upgrade build. I also updated to the newest channel.

During that process (presumably from getting randomly booted from xserver during builds) I ended up with corrupt nix-store and a bunch of disk errors. I fixed all of that, but I still have this really slow build. I have no idea what the problem is, but I am desperate to get back to work.

Please help if you can!! Thank you so much!

For clarity, this is a Thinkpad T495 running an AMD cpu.

Thank you so much in advance. Please let me know what I should be doing.

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2

Could you please elaborate what this means “*browser hangs for minutes”? Can you resolve domain names (DNS) after boot or does this fail early and after some time it works?

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3

Thank you for asking. The windows hang with mostly just the window decoration showing for minutes on end. I haven’t been able to actually get qutebrowser to load any pages (maybe because I have so many open windows on my saved session) but once chromium loads I can start using the web just fine.

4

Right now it’s been stuck on entering standby for 20 minutes

5

Hmm strange. Originally asked: “could you resolve any host initially?”

nix-shell -p dig --run 'dig nixos.org'
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In a tty that returned :

16365848480566985747626137033715
163658484805669857476261370337151920×2560 231 KB

7

have you tried the lts kernel? maybe updating again as the current _latest kernel on unstable is 5.15.1

please send the output of journalctl -b -0 maybe there will be something useful there

2 Likes
8

Okay on it! Are you saying I should switch to the unstable channel as well as set the kernel to current_latest in configuration.nix?

journalctl -b -0 gives http://ix.io/3EDF

9 
nix-repl> linuxPackages_latest.kernel.version
"5.14.16"

linuxPackages_latest is at 5.14.16 on 21.05 so aren’t you on unstable already?

2 Likes
10

Ah crap. I thought I moved off unstable when I changed the channel… Lemme get on that…

11

I’m on 21.05. how is that possible?

12

the system revision says that the system revision you’re on was built with unstable
nix/store/daql2mfvlyyvds09l5ys8vxn9cyjzsbw-nixos-system-nixos-21.11pre328987.c935f5e0add

did you perhaps check your channels without sudo?
sudo nix-channel --list
nixos-rebuild uses root channels instead of user channels

2 Likes
13

Omgosh I had the latest kernel already set. Commented that out… And… FIXED!!!

14

Holy crap. Yes. Gosh. So I’m actually on unstable oy.

Thank you

1 Like